Rather than going chronologically through the World Youth Day pilgrimage, I'm skipping ahead to our third day in Poland, which was more than halfway through the trip itself. Considering that today is the optional memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, better known as Edith Stein, I think the flash forward is appropriate. I began writing this on the iPad while I was still in the parking lot of Berkinau, so I've kept the original byline.
July 26 - OSWIECIM, Poland — It's a cliche by now to call World Youth Day the Catholic Woodstock - Pope Emeritus Benedict has long been critical of reducing WYD to some kind of pop festival or spiritual pep rally. Obviously the pharmaceutical and "free love" aspects of that 1969 event are lacking, but the festival atmosphere is palpable. There is singing, dancing in the streets, chanting, face painting, to go along with the prayer and devotional activities. It is a celebration of faith with a youthful enthusiasm. It is unbridled joy at the freedom to worship Jesus without being judged by a wider peer group who may not think that such public displays of holy affection are cool.
Yesterday in Wadowice, the birthplace of St. John Paul II, the party spirit had already taken hold, even though WYD won't start until the Mass at 5:30 pm local time this evening. Groups were huddled on street corners, milling in the town square, or else forming quasi—conga lines through the streets, singing religious songs and shouting patriotic chants — not just of their own country, but honoring other nations as well. When a group of French saw an American flag pass they'd start chanting "USA! USA!" And Americans would shout, "Viva Mexico!" as that country's tricolor waved down the street. A young man proposed to his girlfriend at the stature of John Paul II, out in front of the basilica that sits right next door to the pope Saint's birthplace. Once they figured out what was going on, a crown of hysterical Spaniards descend upon the newly engaged, chanting and singing. There is a sharing of faith and culture in a way that is unique in my experience. WYD is a festival of love that knows nothing of borders, that fosters unity and understanding.
July 26 - OSWIECIM, Poland — It's a cliche by now to call World Youth Day the Catholic Woodstock - Pope Emeritus Benedict has long been critical of reducing WYD to some kind of pop festival or spiritual pep rally. Obviously the pharmaceutical and "free love" aspects of that 1969 event are lacking, but the festival atmosphere is palpable. There is singing, dancing in the streets, chanting, face painting, to go along with the prayer and devotional activities. It is a celebration of faith with a youthful enthusiasm. It is unbridled joy at the freedom to worship Jesus without being judged by a wider peer group who may not think that such public displays of holy affection are cool.
Yesterday in Wadowice, the birthplace of St. John Paul II, the party spirit had already taken hold, even though WYD won't start until the Mass at 5:30 pm local time this evening. Groups were huddled on street corners, milling in the town square, or else forming quasi—conga lines through the streets, singing religious songs and shouting patriotic chants — not just of their own country, but honoring other nations as well. When a group of French saw an American flag pass they'd start chanting "USA! USA!" And Americans would shout, "Viva Mexico!" as that country's tricolor waved down the street. A young man proposed to his girlfriend at the stature of John Paul II, out in front of the basilica that sits right next door to the pope Saint's birthplace. Once they figured out what was going on, a crown of hysterical Spaniards descend upon the newly engaged, chanting and singing. There is a sharing of faith and culture in a way that is unique in my experience. WYD is a festival of love that knows nothing of borders, that fosters unity and understanding.
That is why standing in this place, the death camps of Auschwitz—Birkenau, strikes such a dissonant cord amid the sweet melody of love that has otherwise fills the air, even in WYD's early phases.
Because of the 2.5 million people who are in the process of arriving in Kraków, and the overwhelming interest in visiting Auschwitz, the visit we were permitted was somewhat truncated. We weren't allowed in the buildings, and getting into places like the starvation bunker where St. Maximilian Kolbe was martyred, which is difficult even on normal days, was completely out of the question this week.
Because of the limited access, the visceral impact of the walk through Auschwitz was blunted somewhat. In Washington D.C.'s Holocaust Museum there is a cattle car that was used to ship Jews to the death camps. Near by are the suitcases, shoes and other personal effects, such as coats and scarves, that the prisoners were made to leave behind, with the false promise that their belongings would follow them to the camps. To walk through the cattle car, sense it's claustrophobic smallness, especially when you allow your imagination to work - picturing 150 people crammed into a space envisioned for 50 in the SS regulations (yes, they actually had a handbook for genocide), overwhelms the emotions. The smell of human sweat is still perceptible both in the car and as you walk past the shoes and satchels. The air is filled with odor of aging leather mixed with that used shoe smell and mild traces of B.O. - the tell tale sign that human beings once walked the earth in these shoes and wore these coats. Here at Auschwitz the distance we are kept at from the barracks and other buildings negates the immediacy of the experience.
A walk through Auschwitz on this day is deceiving. The buildings are unimposing. They look like they could be abandoned municipal office buildings or public housing. Trees line the roads shading us from the brutal summer sun. The only indication that this was a concentration camp is the electric barbed wire fences that ring the camp, along with signs that tell you - There in that fenced off courtyard is the wall where prisoners were routinely shot - Here was a makeshift gas chamber - Here was the building where women were experimented on - Down there is the starvation bunker where Maximillian Kolbe died in another man's place. Barring those placards, and the knowledge I had beforehand, it would be easy to wonder why this otherwise unremarkable complex of brick buildings is being preserved.
There is silence as we walk the path set out for us. We are one of dozens of groups visiting the camp this day. The numbers will only go up during the week as WYD pilgrims continue arriving in Kraków. The quiet is pierced by the shrill, unholy screeching of a flock of small birds darting about between trees. When we get to the end, I feel nothing. I don't feel sad, or overcome. The only thing I feel is guilt that I don't seem to feel anything in particular. I hear the birds give one more, accusatory, squawk before getting on the bus.
Auschwitz was build to be a work camp. People were killed here by gas and firing squad, along with torture and poisoning, but on an ad hoc basis. I have to believe that giving the place a façade of normalcy, a quaint beauty almost, with its red brick buildings and Spanish tile roofs, was some cruel joke on the part of the Nazis. The sign over the gates that famously reads - Albeit Macht Frei - Work Makes You Free - must have added to the illusion that there would be a life after Auschwitz for the inmates - a life the vast majority never saw.
As we approach Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, there is no mistaking what this place was built for. There are no trees, except at the parameters - no picturesque buildings, no signs of hope, not even of the false kind. If Auschwitz I was where the Nazis learned their way, Birkenau is where they perfected their evil craft. Auschwitz II was built for one reason: to facilitate the death of as many human beings as possible in the most efficient way that could be devised.
Again, we were kept on a controlled route that takes us through the heart of the camp. Now, at mid-day, the sun is burning hot in the sky and there is no shade to protect us. The buildings that still stand, that the Nazis didn't demolish to cover their tracks, are simple barracks with none of the faux charm of the older camp.
Again there are signs explaining the atrocities that went on, but this time they are unnecessary - the barren scene speaks for itself. Except when I get to the end of the path. Finally there are trees. I'm parched from the walk in the scorching sun, desperate for water, but my bottle is empty. At least there is shade, I think. Near the patch of trees are the remains of a gas chamber and crematorium that was destroyed during a prisoner revolt. Then I see it. A sign with a large photo of women and children taken over seventy years ago amid these same trees where I am now taking a brief respite from the July heat. The caption says that these mothers and children had just arrived, and were waiting to be brought to the "showers." That of course was the euphemism used to describe the gas chambers. Some women are smiling for the camera, children are playing. None knows these were their last moments of life on planet earth, captured by Gestapo photographers.
The trees no longer give me shade. They accuse me like the birds, accuse me of humanity's failure. The motto we have proclaimed since 1945 is "never again," but we know the this isn't true. Maybe it hasn't been done as efficiently, as broadly, or so focused in on one group like it was against the Jews by the Nazis. But we've had the Killing Fields, Rwanda, the political killings in Central America, ethnic "cleansing" in the Balkans, the extermination of Christians by ISIS, and many other genocides since the last camp was liberated in 1945. The trees, the birds, the very ground cry out, asking how long will we continue to destroy ourselves? How long will we deny our common humanity? How long will I stay silent as the blood of the innocent calls from the ground?
This stroll through the rings of a terrestrial Hades didn't have the all at once, sledgehammer blow that the trip to the museum in Washington did for me twenty years ago. This journey worked on me slow, wearing me down, fatiguing my soul. By the end my numbness was replaced by alternating feelings of rage and despair. My emotions were raw, nerves frayed. Though as a Christian I know that neither rage nor despair, while understandable reactions, is correct, at least in the long term, I was groping for some sign of hope.
If this was a journey through the levels of hell, then the pilgrimage as a whole, with its long hikes through heat, rain, and mud - early mornings and late nights, and cramped tram rides were the purgatory. But these trivial privations are insignificant at this moment, and are better left for another time.
What I want to end with is the journey through heaven. Tonight we were in Blonia Park, celebrating WYD's opening Eucharist with Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, Archbishop of Kraków, and John Paul's long time personal secretary. There was the singing, the joy that one normally finds at WYD. The priest who gave Holy Communion in our section had a look of preternatural peace in his eyes. The Mass is a shadow of the celestial reality for which we all long. It is our union with the Risen Lord. Here we were, thousands from all over the world, united by our love of Christ.
This vision doesn't erase the reality that I saw this morning. It also doesn't mean that we as a human community don't have a long road ahead of us. But it was like the Transfiguration, in which Jesus gave to Peter, John and James a glimpse of the Resurrection, even as Good Friday was looming in the future. It gives me hope, and the sight of so many young people united by love tells me that all isn't lost, and the trees, the birds and the blood soaked earth will not have the final word.
Because of the 2.5 million people who are in the process of arriving in Kraków, and the overwhelming interest in visiting Auschwitz, the visit we were permitted was somewhat truncated. We weren't allowed in the buildings, and getting into places like the starvation bunker where St. Maximilian Kolbe was martyred, which is difficult even on normal days, was completely out of the question this week.
Because of the limited access, the visceral impact of the walk through Auschwitz was blunted somewhat. In Washington D.C.'s Holocaust Museum there is a cattle car that was used to ship Jews to the death camps. Near by are the suitcases, shoes and other personal effects, such as coats and scarves, that the prisoners were made to leave behind, with the false promise that their belongings would follow them to the camps. To walk through the cattle car, sense it's claustrophobic smallness, especially when you allow your imagination to work - picturing 150 people crammed into a space envisioned for 50 in the SS regulations (yes, they actually had a handbook for genocide), overwhelms the emotions. The smell of human sweat is still perceptible both in the car and as you walk past the shoes and satchels. The air is filled with odor of aging leather mixed with that used shoe smell and mild traces of B.O. - the tell tale sign that human beings once walked the earth in these shoes and wore these coats. Here at Auschwitz the distance we are kept at from the barracks and other buildings negates the immediacy of the experience.
A walk through Auschwitz on this day is deceiving. The buildings are unimposing. They look like they could be abandoned municipal office buildings or public housing. Trees line the roads shading us from the brutal summer sun. The only indication that this was a concentration camp is the electric barbed wire fences that ring the camp, along with signs that tell you - There in that fenced off courtyard is the wall where prisoners were routinely shot - Here was a makeshift gas chamber - Here was the building where women were experimented on - Down there is the starvation bunker where Maximillian Kolbe died in another man's place. Barring those placards, and the knowledge I had beforehand, it would be easy to wonder why this otherwise unremarkable complex of brick buildings is being preserved.
There is silence as we walk the path set out for us. We are one of dozens of groups visiting the camp this day. The numbers will only go up during the week as WYD pilgrims continue arriving in Kraków. The quiet is pierced by the shrill, unholy screeching of a flock of small birds darting about between trees. When we get to the end, I feel nothing. I don't feel sad, or overcome. The only thing I feel is guilt that I don't seem to feel anything in particular. I hear the birds give one more, accusatory, squawk before getting on the bus.
Auschwitz was build to be a work camp. People were killed here by gas and firing squad, along with torture and poisoning, but on an ad hoc basis. I have to believe that giving the place a façade of normalcy, a quaint beauty almost, with its red brick buildings and Spanish tile roofs, was some cruel joke on the part of the Nazis. The sign over the gates that famously reads - Albeit Macht Frei - Work Makes You Free - must have added to the illusion that there would be a life after Auschwitz for the inmates - a life the vast majority never saw.
As we approach Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, there is no mistaking what this place was built for. There are no trees, except at the parameters - no picturesque buildings, no signs of hope, not even of the false kind. If Auschwitz I was where the Nazis learned their way, Birkenau is where they perfected their evil craft. Auschwitz II was built for one reason: to facilitate the death of as many human beings as possible in the most efficient way that could be devised.
Again, we were kept on a controlled route that takes us through the heart of the camp. Now, at mid-day, the sun is burning hot in the sky and there is no shade to protect us. The buildings that still stand, that the Nazis didn't demolish to cover their tracks, are simple barracks with none of the faux charm of the older camp.
Again there are signs explaining the atrocities that went on, but this time they are unnecessary - the barren scene speaks for itself. Except when I get to the end of the path. Finally there are trees. I'm parched from the walk in the scorching sun, desperate for water, but my bottle is empty. At least there is shade, I think. Near the patch of trees are the remains of a gas chamber and crematorium that was destroyed during a prisoner revolt. Then I see it. A sign with a large photo of women and children taken over seventy years ago amid these same trees where I am now taking a brief respite from the July heat. The caption says that these mothers and children had just arrived, and were waiting to be brought to the "showers." That of course was the euphemism used to describe the gas chambers. Some women are smiling for the camera, children are playing. None knows these were their last moments of life on planet earth, captured by Gestapo photographers.
The trees no longer give me shade. They accuse me like the birds, accuse me of humanity's failure. The motto we have proclaimed since 1945 is "never again," but we know the this isn't true. Maybe it hasn't been done as efficiently, as broadly, or so focused in on one group like it was against the Jews by the Nazis. But we've had the Killing Fields, Rwanda, the political killings in Central America, ethnic "cleansing" in the Balkans, the extermination of Christians by ISIS, and many other genocides since the last camp was liberated in 1945. The trees, the birds, the very ground cry out, asking how long will we continue to destroy ourselves? How long will we deny our common humanity? How long will I stay silent as the blood of the innocent calls from the ground?
This stroll through the rings of a terrestrial Hades didn't have the all at once, sledgehammer blow that the trip to the museum in Washington did for me twenty years ago. This journey worked on me slow, wearing me down, fatiguing my soul. By the end my numbness was replaced by alternating feelings of rage and despair. My emotions were raw, nerves frayed. Though as a Christian I know that neither rage nor despair, while understandable reactions, is correct, at least in the long term, I was groping for some sign of hope.
If this was a journey through the levels of hell, then the pilgrimage as a whole, with its long hikes through heat, rain, and mud - early mornings and late nights, and cramped tram rides were the purgatory. But these trivial privations are insignificant at this moment, and are better left for another time.
What I want to end with is the journey through heaven. Tonight we were in Blonia Park, celebrating WYD's opening Eucharist with Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, Archbishop of Kraków, and John Paul's long time personal secretary. There was the singing, the joy that one normally finds at WYD. The priest who gave Holy Communion in our section had a look of preternatural peace in his eyes. The Mass is a shadow of the celestial reality for which we all long. It is our union with the Risen Lord. Here we were, thousands from all over the world, united by our love of Christ.
This vision doesn't erase the reality that I saw this morning. It also doesn't mean that we as a human community don't have a long road ahead of us. But it was like the Transfiguration, in which Jesus gave to Peter, John and James a glimpse of the Resurrection, even as Good Friday was looming in the future. It gives me hope, and the sight of so many young people united by love tells me that all isn't lost, and the trees, the birds and the blood soaked earth will not have the final word.
1 comment:
Made me feel like I was there.
:(
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